


Wooster's School for Wayward Girls

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-19
Updated: 2004-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am not a man to quail at the first sign of trouble.  We Woosters came over with the Conqueror, and as such bear the noble strain of blood that is ripe for the business of conquering and the like.  But d. is the better part of v., and all that, and what with this latest reversal of fortune I think even the Conqueror himself would have said, "Bertram, my lad, take to the hills."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wooster's School for Wayward Girls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kanna-Ophelia

 

 

"Jeeves," I said, "this is the absolute limit."

"Indeed, sir."

I am not a man to quail at the first sign of trouble. We Woosters came over with the Conqueror, and as such bear the noble strain of blood that is ripe for the business of conquering and the like. But d. is the better part of v., and all that, and what with this latest reversal of fortune I think even the Conqueror himself would have said, "Bertram, my lad, take to the hills."

I had awakened with a touch of the past evening at the Mottled Oyster still upon me, but this wasn't enough to foul the morn. For no sooner had I sat up in bed than Jeeves glided in like a mallard upon a pond, bearing one of his restorative drinks. He's told me some of the ingredients - I believe Worchestershire and eggs play some vital role - but the whole possesses a certain whoosh-and-kick that speaks of the miraculous.

I took the magic gulp. Fire sprouted in the innards, soared up to the cranium and set right the works. The chilling after-effects of the previous night's revels scattered upon the four winds like dandelion fluff after a gusty sneeze.

"God's in his heaven, what?" I said.

"Authorities differ on the subject, sir."

"No, no. You know what I mean. That saying of yours that you're always going on about."

"You mean, sir, 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.'"

"The very one. That's about the size of it, isn't it?" Jeeves paused. Given that he's the sort of cove who's quick with a reply, I have learned that any hesitation on Jeeves' part is a sign of peril. "Isn't it, Jeeves?"

"There are two telegrams for you, sir. You will find them on the tray."

Telegrams before breakfast often mean terrible things, such as aunts bearing errands. But even a gypsy fortuneteller of the first degree could be excused for squinting into the palm or tea leaves or so forth and not imagining such horrors as now befell me.

The first was from my boon companion Augustus Fink-Nottle, who was clearly feeling less boon-ish than usual:

ALL OVER BETWEEN MADELINE AND SELF. NO DOUBT THIS IS JUST AS YOU HAVE WISHED IT, BUT MUST SAY AM DISAPPOINTED. IS THIS BERTRAM WOOSTER I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH? WILL NOT ATTEND YOUR WEDDING BREAKFAST, SO DO NOT ASK, UNLESS OF COURSE ANATOLE COOKING BUT EVEN IN THAT CIRCUMSTANCE WILL BE MOST COOL. WARNING AS FORMER FRIEND TO ANOTHER, HEART OF WOMAN AS FICKLE AS THAT OF NEWT.

GUSSIE

This gave me a frightful turn. Gussie being a friend of the bosom, I naturally disliked the hostile tone I divined within the telegram. However, far more ominous by halves was the news that his erstwhile fiance, that curlicued sap Madeline Bassett, was once again on the loose, matrimonially speaking. In the past, her nuptial hopes had become pinned on yours truly, and in my experience, when a girl really wants to get engaged, there's not much the chap in question can do to stop it. Only luck and Jeeves had kept me from the altar thus far, and what if Madeline should have cast her line on a day when Jeeves was visiting relations? I shuddered to think of it: the hasty ceremony at a registry office, the smirk of Aunt Dahlia, Jeeves' return to find himself bound to obey the new mistress en titre. I tend to think Madeline and Jeeves could not occupy the same situation for terribly long, and you could lay good money on the chances that it would be Jeeves to move out. My powers of observation inform me wives are like that.

I picked up the next telegram to distract myself from my troubles. After all, what could be worse than the news of Gussie's escape from Madeline Bassett?

Then I saw that the telegram in question was from D'Arcy Cheesewright, known to all those who loathe him, which is to say anyone to whom the roundheaded louse has ever been introduced, as Stilton:

HO! YOUR TRICKS TO SEPARATE FLORENCE FROM SELF LOWEST, MOST CONNIVING, WORTHY OF TRIP BEFORE THE OLD BAILEY. ONLY REGRET HAVE LEFT THE POLICE FORCE AND CANNOT CLAP YOU IN IRONS AS YOU DESERVE. UPON NEXT MEETING WILL TAKE YOUR SKULL AND -

There was much more in this vein, not worth repeating, and the sort of thing to make you wonder if telegraph people will simply tap out anything one says without ever saying, "Desist, evildoer! Thou shalt sully the hallowed lines of Marconi no more!"

It was at this time I remarked to Jeeves that this was the limit - the in medias res where our story began, you see.

"One thing about all this bothers me, Jeeves. That is to say, all of it bothers me, but the especial point of controversy is the fact that both Gussie and Stilton seem to think I wanted to break up the engagements."

The fact that both Madeline and Florence seem to have taken a shine to me has been taken, quite wrongly, as evidence that I must be reflecting the same moony beams back in their direction. I could point out, at length, why I would rather be lashed to wild bears or something else similarly unwieldy than married to either of these wretched females, but it's not the sort of thing you can say to the chaps who are going to marry them. At best, it earns one a sock in the jaw; at worst, the gentlemen in question might realize what a mess they've gotten themselves in for and run for the distant horizon, leaving Wooster once again exposed to the marital threat.

"Both telegrams carried an unmistakable note of blame, sir."

"And why? I haven't so much as clapped eyes on Florence or Madeline in a blue moon. Several blue moons, in fact. I sent them Christmas gifts, but that was just a matter of signing name to card." My signature is a manly, decisive thing, thoroughly worthy of the penmanship medal I won in fourth year, but scarcely likely to make the female of the species weak in the joints. "I don't even know what the bally presents were! You did all the shopping, didn't you?"

"I did, sir. Both Miss Bassett and Miss Craye received books of poetry."

I goggled at the man. Normally, Jeeves is the very soul of discretion, but it seemed to me he'd taken a more than a bit of a risk with that one. "Poetry?" I said, and I think it fair to say my tone might be described, even by courageous men, as chilling. "On my behalf, you selected books of poetry to give to the two most lovesick girls of my acquaintance?"

"I considered it an appropriate gift, sir."

"You can say that even now, with the crisis upon us! Are you completely unacquainted with the feminine mind?" I detected a certain coolness in him at this, and perhaps I did speak hastily; Jeeves' grasp of the psychology of the individual is normally quite acute, the sort of genius I rarely fail to admire. But it appeared to me at this moment that Jeeves had unquestionably got his facts upside-down in some key sense. "Poetry, Jeeves. The food of love. Because of those blasted pamphlets of verse, both Florence and Madeline have decided that I am sick with love for them and would make better husband material than Stilton or Gussie." Not that a well-carved slab of roast beef wouldn't make better husband material than Stilton or Gussie, but you get the spirit of the thing.

"That is one interpretation, sir." Jeeves was as unperturbed as Nelson's Column. "However, I would consider such an event unlikely in the extreme."

Obviously the man was caught out in a blunder and didn't know how to handle himself. Given that Jeeves blunders seldom, you could see he wasn't practiced in the area. But I was in a dungeon of the soul too great for pity. "Lay out my suit," I said, voicing all the disapproval with which those words can be stuffed.

"The blue, sir?"

I began to agree, but no. Jeeves had yet to understand the depth of the crisis, and there was but one way to make it clear to his sartorially configured brain. "I think not, Jeeves. Let's have the fawn check."

"But sir - in the morning -"

"The fawn check, and I'll hear no more of it," I said, with a sort of insouciance, if that's the word I mean.

As I finished the restorative beverage, I mulled over the difficulty in which I now found myself. Fearsome as the prospect of wedded matrimony with la fille Bassett might be, Florence Craye caused a similar droop in the spirits.

Now, most fellows, upon getting a gander at either or both of the women in question, would not immediately spy the difficulty. Both women are blonde of hair and blue of eye, with the sorts of figures that would make sailors wolf-whistle and pound their fists upon table-tops and do other sailory things. But such allurements are of little interest to Wooster. Of temperament, however, the ladies could not be more different than - well, than Jeeves and I.

Madeline is one of those blushing young lasses, fortunately falling out of fashion these days, who believe that tulips are the teacups of the fairy-queen, and that every rainbow grants a wish to the pure of heart. Perfect rot, of course.

Florence would be the first to sneer at tulip-talk, but that would be the end of her usefulness. A bluestocking of the first order, she is forever reading serious literature such as that Spinoza chap Jeeves is so keen on. The rub is that, when Cupid's arrow strikes Miss Craye in the heart bearing the name of Wooster, she begins by trying to improve my mind. Well, I don't want it improved. Let it be, say I.

While I donned the aforesaid fawn check, I began to wonder if perhaps it was time to take one of my jaunts to New York. Acquaintances can and do cross the Atlantic to hunt one up, even in Greenwich Village - with alarming frequency, I must say - but it might protect Wooster from the amore of either Bassett or Craye for a few months. By then, surely the love-light would have plopped back onto Gussie and Stilton, or onto two other unfortunates. This seemed a tidy solution to my plight, and I hadn't had to call upon Jeeves once; I took a not-undue pride in the prospect of informing him of our clever escape.

But the man was but waiting to lower the boom, as they say. No sooner had he adjusted the break in my trouser cuffs than he said, "I should inform you, sir, that two callers have just arrived."

"Callers?" At this hour? Some people think it's perfectly acceptable to expect a cove to be up and about at all times of day, even before noon. Indecent, in my opinion. Then a dreadful notion hit me square in the noggin. "It's not Stilton Cheesewright, is it?"

"I would have told Mr. Cheesewright that you were out, sir," Jeeves said, very nearly redeeming himself in mine sight. But all such notions of bonhomie went jitterbugging off as he added, "Miss Craye and Miss Bassett have come to visit."

We Woosters are of iron constitution, but I think it is fair to say that even Nelson would have given this bit of news a leap and a screech. "What? Both of them?"

"They arrived together, sir."

One bawdy lass I always ran into at the Algonquin had a habit of saying, "What fresh hell is this?" I never knew what she was on about, but at this moment I began to glimpse her meaning. Either female might have been expected to pounce at any instant, but both of them together? Visions shimmered in my mind, unpleasant in the extreme, of an unseemly fight. Would they demand that I choose? Has ever man been faced with a choice that was more of an utter blight than that?

"And you didn't tell them that I was out?"

"No, sir. They are in the parlor, taking tea. I informed them you would join the party shortly."

"Jeeves, you have disappointed me."

"I am sorry, sir." He didn't sound sorry. There was a bit of the defiant gleam in his eyes. Not so that you could see it, really - Jeeves has a deuce of a way of getting things across invisibly, sort of like the Holy Spirit, if I remember my catechism right - but I detected it all the same.

There was but one way to bring the full weight of my disapproval upon Jeeves' consciousness. "Beginning tomorrow - I am regrowing my mustache."

This made an impression on the man. His lips pressed together as if clamped. But his only response was, "Very good, sir."

Well. That had showed him. It would've been more satisfying, you'd think, but then there was the frightful spectre of womanhood waiting to put a thorough damper on the old spirits.

I gathered my courage. If the fate was to befall me, well, let it be when Jeeves was on the case. Though relations were now at a bit of a chill in that area, I did not doubt that, when push came to shove, and things were looking more than a bit shovey, Jeeves would employ his considerable mental equipment to save Wooster from pledging any troth.

Boldly I strode into the parlor, determined to show no sign that even the most glazed female could take for evidence of pining. Imagine my surprise to see that Madeline and Florence were seated side-by-side on the chaise - more than a bit chummy, you know, even holding hands.

"Bertie," Madeline breathed. "We have come to thank you."

"Thank me?" I stepped no closer. With a warm welcome like that, a man could not be too cautious.

"I never realized you were a man of such penetration," Florence said, almost as dewy as Madeline. "I always thought there was something in you that could be brought out, Bertie. An insight that longed for the guiding light of knowledge."

"Oh, rather."

Florence glowed like a heat lamp at the baths. "However, you did not need me to guide you. It is you who have guided me, Bertie, and both Madeline and I shall forever be grateful. But for you, we would have spent our entire lives married - well, married to men. Instead, we shall live our True Lives as women together."

You could hear the capital letters when she spoke. Dashed odd thing, but there it was.

Now, I didn't have the first idea what Florence was on about, but since it sounded like both she and Madeline were off not only Gussie and Stilton but the very idea of men altogether, I felt a bit of the tension in my spine disperse, like a crowd of gawkers after they've been told in no uncertain terms that there is nothing to see and they might as well shuffle off. "Right. Exactly. Good show!"

"If you hadn't sent us that poetry - oh, Bertie!" Madeline blinked her eyes so that her lashes fluttered alarmingly, like butterflies in a jar eager to be elsewhere. "Florence and I might never have found one another."

"Found one another again, you mean." Florence cooed this last in a decidedly dove-like manner, one which I recognized from the dark days when it was aimed in my direction. "You see, Bertie, though I am certain you could not have known, Madeline and I were in school together. Oh, such wonderful times!"

"She was the bravest girl at school," Madeline said, hands clasped beneath her chin. "The secret club were so horrid to her -"

"Secret club?" Nothing is more dangerous than a single female unless it's a pack of 'em, I say. When one hears what girls get up to on their own, it damages the popular concept of the delicate sex.

"They were wicked!" Madeline insisted. "Why, once they cut off her hair as she slept -"

I snorted. "By Jove! That's a hot one, there -" At the accusing stares then directed Wooster-ward, I summoned a more somber expression. "Ghastly, what?"

"They did worse things," Florence sighed. "I have not told you of the time they literally dangled me from a cliff-face by my heels."

Madeline gasped and gripped Florence's hand all the tighter. "But you were never intimidated by them, were you, Florence? You always brought honor to the school, no matter what you did."

"You did too!" Florence actually chucked Madeline under the chin at that. "Remember the time we had to get the choir music to the singers before the big competition began?"

"You stole a motorcycle!" Madeline said, thus markedly notching upward my opinion of the Craye. If I'd had any notion she could do something as sporting as that, I might have married the girl after all. "And I gripped you 'round the waist as we went flying off through the countryside -"

Yet more boarding-school memoirs kept pouring out, and my relevance in the room seemed to shrink. Somewhere in the middle of an interminable anecdote about a plot to keep Florence's aunts away from the school on Speech Day - seems to me that any act keeping aunts at bay deserves a round of the heartiest applause - I managed to slip out for a word with Jeeves.

"Odd, isn't it, Jeeves?" I said, dabbing at the brow with my handkerchief. A man must be allowed to recover from such close scrapes with doom. "They've not come after me at all, but dashed if I can figure out what they're on about."

"If I might explain, sir. I believe that Miss Bassett and Miss Craye have determined they they are not in love with Mr. Fink-Nottle or Mr. Cheesewright or with you - but with one another."

I stared at the man. "What? But - they're both women!"

"It is not an unheard-of circumstance, sir. People of the same gender sometimes feel for one another the attractions and affections which society often attributes solely to male-female relations."

This took a moment to sink in; once again, it seemed to me that Jeeves had failed to grasp the crux of the central point of the argument. "Well, of course people like their own kind better. Everyone does! But men marry women and vice versa."

"Not everyone is primarily drawn to the same sex, sir. In fact, this is true of a decided minority of individuals."

Well, that cast rather a new light on the situation. I'd always thought the bit where we all got hitched to the opposite sex was just the way things were done, like not wearing a silk shirt at dinner or something. If there were males who actually felt the swoony pash for females - well, strange though it might seem to the mind of Wooster, much of human society seemed better ordered than I'd previously given it credit for. It just goes to show you. "Florence and Madeline are in this minority? They've been rather wild after men before- - me, in particular."

"The constraints of societal expectations are high, sir." No telling what that meant, but Jeeves had an eager light in his eyes now, like many an avid angler I've seen at the moment when a trouty tug on the line spells victory. "But both women had shared reminiscences of their boarding-school days with me in the past, sir, and I detected a note of warmth in their memories of one another. I therefore took the liberty of sending them, as Christmas gifts from yourself, books of poetry by Sappho, a woman who wrote of the love that does not dare speak its name. I surmised that such readings would bring them to a recognition of their true emotions."

All was now made clear. "Jeeves," I said humbly, "I have wronged you."

"Not at all, sir."

"I ought to have known that brain of yours was on the case."

"I am pleased to have been of service, sir."

There was but one way to share the full warmth of my approval. "You may disregard all I have said about the return of the mustache."

Jeeves smiled - again, sort of invisibly, but still it was a smile. I'd bet a fiver. "Thank you, sir."

Well, I returned to the parlor. We all had some tea, and Florence and Madeline kept telling stories about these terrifying teenage harpies at their school and the clever ways they'd been worsted, and what with one thing and another we had a pretty pally time of it. Funny, but when they weren't trying to wrangle proposals from me, they both turned out to be perfectly jolly company. This gig where women go with other women is all right in my book. Saves any amount of trouble.

As the visit drew to a close, Florence sighed. "The only problem is how we shall make our fortunes, henceforth. Our families are certain to disapprove -"

"And what shall we do?" Madeline sighed. "But we shall never be parted."

"I had thought of teaching school." Florence's chin was lifted in a noble manner, like that statue in the park with that wild woman driving a chariot, toga whipping about. "Though I should not enjoy being a governess, it would be a small price to pay for True Love."

Again the capital letters swam forth. I thought of asking Jeeves for a clue - but then one popped into my mind on its own recognizance. Awfully peculiar, but there it was. "What if you started your own school? For the refinement of young minds and all that?"

"Oh, how wonderful that would be!" Florence seemed less bucked-up by the idea than you'd think from what she'd just spouted. "But when our parents cut off our allowances, such a venture will be entirely beyond our means."

We Woosters know when the time has come to make a noble sacrifice, and that's pretty much where the hands of the clock had stopped. "I should be happy to fund the venture. But say the word, and the check is written."

"Bertie!" There was some squealing, and some hugging, and even some kissing, though thankfully on the platonic order. It was all a big love-fest, and I don't mind telling you, I felt more than a bit heroic. The Conqueror couldn't have gotten a better welcome, and if that tapestry in the museum is any sign, he didn't.

"We shall name the establishment for you," Florence promised as they traipsed out, hand in hand. "The Wooster School!"

"Oh, it will be delightful!" Madeline said. "Promise you will attend every Speech Day."

"Oh, certainly." Time to wriggle out of that later. Jeeves knows his business, after all.

Once we were alone and I was brooding upon an afternoon brandy, I said, "A minority, Jeeves? Are you sure?"

"If current statistics are correct, sir. It is my personal opinion that the numbers are higher than popularly believed - but yes, sir, still a minority."

"Is that just girls? Surely it's not for men."

"For men as well, sir."

Might as well out with it. Jeeves is an unflappable sort of cove. "I believe I'm in that minority myself!"

"I had surmised as much, sir. When I selected the books of Sapphic verse for Miss Craye and Miss Bassett, I had thought it likely that their awakening would spark your own."

"Dashed considerate of you, old man." He just nodded. "Maybe I should read some of this Sappho myself, what? Though I imagine it's rather slower going than 'The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish.'"

"I do not think you would find the poetry congenial to your temperament, sir. But if I might suggest - there is an exhibition of ancient Greek artifacts at the British Museum at present. We might perhaps attend. I have been curious to see the antiquities." He had that shiny look about the eyes again. "As for you, sir, certain urns may prove instructive."

"Consider the admission my gift," I said grandly. "And before we go -"

"Yes, sir?"

"I should change. This fawn check - it's not at all right for this time of day."

Jeeves took on a bit more of a sheen, if such a thing is possible. "The blue, sir?"

"The blue it is!"

**

THE END

 

 

 


End file.
